Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brian L. Bates

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Mark Arsten (talk) 15:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Brian L. Bates[edit]

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seems to be a WP:BLP1E created by the subject himself. Only claim to fame is that he is the first gay republican in Georgia. He isn't even the first gay person elected there, which might have generated enough third party mentions to meet WP:BIO or some kind of presumptive notability. As it is, we're left with the fact that he's a local councillor for a town of 8,000 people, which fails WP:POLITICIAN. Doesn't appear to have any kind of significant independent reliable coverage. News stories in The Advocate, a LGBT interest magazine, queerty.com, a LGBT website, which does not seem to be a reliable source, and peachpundit, a blog do not seem to be enough to establish this person's notability. Valenciano (talk) 15:35, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 16:28, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Georgia (U.S. state)-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 16:29, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. My first inclination is to cast a "Delete" !vote, since a city council member in a city of 8,000 doesn't seem to be a very notable figure. A Google search didn't turn up anything in the wider national press: the Advocate and Queerty pieces seem to be about the best claims that the subject has to notability. However, the fact that they're directed primarily at a LGBT readership doesn't mean that they can't be taken as evidence of notability. If, for instance, we were discussing the notability of a skateboarder, we wouldn't insist on coverage in the New York Times; coverage in publications like Thrasher would probably be considered sufficient. The WP articles on The Advocate and Queerty suggest that they've got a decent readership: these aren't just some random person's blog. I wouldn't ferociously defend this article, but I'd give it the benefit of the doubt. Ammodramus (talk) 17:42, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. Queerty, for example, states that it is "free of an agenda... except that one" so to me, a gay person being mentioned there isn't anything noteworthy. They've already said that they'll push an agenda. If Thrasher, for example, openly stated the same I'd be a bit more unsure of it as a reliable source for establishing notability for skateboarders' bios. Not that it's relevant to this AFD but I'd fully support LGBT rights, however if an LGBT person has only been covered in LGBT magazines, then that's short of the overall coverage I'd expect to see to be sure that WP:BIO is met. Furthermore, both those sources still only cover him in relation to a single event, so WP:BLP1E applies. Valenciano (talk) 00:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note that WP:BLP1E requires the subject to meet each of three conditions, the second of which is "that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual". The link leads to an essay whose lead paragraph includes the statement: "Persons who actively seek out media attention are not low-profile, regardless of whether or not they are notable." In view of the fact that Bates holds a public office, and is running for re-election to it, I don't believe that he could be considered a low-profile individual; indeed, the username of the article's creator suggests that it might've been Bates himself, in which case the very act of creating the article would consitutute "actively seek[ing] out media attention". Since the second prong of BLP1E doesn't appear to be met, that particular policy doesn't seem to apply in this case. Ammodramus (talk) 19:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The page you link to is an essay and I don't see that he meets any of the criteria there for being "high profile." Countless deletion discussions in the past and the guidelines at WP:POLITICIAN, which trump essays, have established that running for public office or being an elected local councillor is not enough to make someone high profile. See for example Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ruth_O'Keeffe or Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Earl_Williamson. Especially in cases like this where they remain a basic local councillor in a council covering a very small area. If it were otherwise we would have hundreds of thousands of articles about such people. My interpretation of that essay would be that the person sought and obtained significant coverage as a result of self-publicising. That hasn't happened here. The subject, or a supporter, creating a Wikipedia article about themselves does not equal media attention. Indeed giving someone who creates a puff piece about themselves on Wikipedia exemption from WP:BLP1E as a result strikes me as a very dangerous precedent to set. So again we're left with the questions: Does this person meet WP:POLITICIAN? No. Have they achieved any kind of significant coverage in reliable third party sources? No. Valenciano (talk) 20:38, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:POLITICIAN is a subsection of Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Additional_criteria, the first two paragraphs of which state that "Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included... A person who fails to meet these additional criteria may still be notable under Wikipedia:Notability."

The essay linked in WP:BLP1E seems to be the only place where "low-profile individual" is defined. There are four occurrences of it at the BLP1E page: two link to the essay, and the other two assume that we know what it means. Absent an official Wikipolicy definition of the phrase, the essay seems to be the best definition we've got. It's also consistent with BLP1E's placement in WP:BLP as a subsection of the section "Presumption in favor of privacy". As I read it, the policy is there to keep minimally notable people from being made the unwilling subjects of WP articles, and doesn't apply to subjects who're willing or eager to endure the limelight.

This definition of "low-profile individual" does not render us impotent to delete articles about self-puffers. It only means that we can't cite BLP1E in doing so. I note that BLP1E is mentioned in neither of the local-councillor deletion discussions linked above: the articles were deleted because the subjects failed to meet WP:GNG.

I disagree, albeit weakly, that Bates hasn't received significant coverage in reliable independent sources. I don't see how either Queerty or the Advocate fails reliability or independence. Note that Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Biased_or_opinionated_sources, a subsection of WP:RS, states that "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective". The fact that these sources are directed chiefly at the LGBT community, and that Queerty admits (albet, in my reading, somewhat tongue-in-cheek) to promoting the "gay agenda", doesn't keep them from being reliable. My only question on notability, and the reason why my "Keep" !vote was modified by "weak", is whether the coverage is extensive enough. However, there was definitely more than a passing mention: given the length of the Advocate piece, in particular, I'm inclined to give this article the benefit of the doubt. Ammodramus (talk) 01:41, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, in the past there was often a consensus that "first LGBT person to hold a particular office" was a sufficient claim of notability in its own right; however, more recently that consensus seems to have weakened — see, frex, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jim Ireton. (Full disclosure, I cast a keep vote there but the keeps didn't carry the day, so I've had to adjust my understanding of where the consensus on this kind of thing actually stands.) In truth, as the number of openly LGBT people getting elected to office increases, so too does the number of LGBT people getting elected to offices so minor that being their first LGBT holder isn't really a compelling notability claim because the office itself just isn't notable enough for us to care about its history at all. List of the first LGBT holders of political offices in the United States#Local, for instance, is starting to get just silly with redlinks for first-LGBT holders of council seats in their own individual small towns. Yes, some of them indeed still qualify for one reason or another — the ones in Ann Arbor, for instance, were also the first three LGBT politicians ever to hold any office whatsoever anywhere in the entire country — but there are also numerous people being listed there now who hold offices far too small and insignificant for being their first LGBT holder to count as a good reason why they should actually get an article.

The criterion absolutely made sense a few years ago, when even some of the bigger cities were still only just getting their first openly gay councillors. In cities that weren't quite large enough to land in the NYC/Chicago/El Lay "city councillors are always notable" class, but were large enough that a city councillor might still potentially be notable enough, it made sense as a criterion that could put an edge case like Joel Burns, Chris Seelbach, Bruce Kraus or Gary Schiff over the bar. But now that small towns whose municipal councillors would have no chance of ever being considered notable otherwise are electing LGBT people too, it's rapidly losing its effectiveness as a convincing notability claim.

The Advocate and Queerty aren't unreliable sources in principle — but as LGBT-oriented sources, they're obviously still going to cover any LGBT person who gets elected to office regardless of how notable the office is or isn't for our purposes. So they're valid sources for verification of facts, certainly, but they don't in and of themselves constitute proof that the office he's gotten elected to is notable enough to warrant inclusion in Wikipedia at all. If Brian Bates could claim to be the first LGBT person ever elected anywhere in all of Georgia, he'd be a clearcut keep — but if all he can claim is to be the first LGBT person associated with the Republicans instead of the Democrats to get elected in the state, or the first LGBT person to be elected to the municipal council of a small town whose municipal councillors would have absolutely no chance of ever being considered notable otherwise, then that's a notability claim with too many amendments attached to it to be compelling anymore.

Delete. One or two sentences in the "History" section of Doraville, Georgia is all we really need here. Bearcat (talk) 02:23, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with Bearcat's point regarding the particular office-- obviously, it'd be ludicrous to start articles on every "first openly gay person elected to the (city, state) council". However, I think that being the first openly gay Republican elected in the state of Georgia pushes Bates over the notability threshhold. Social conservatives are a powerful force in the Republican party in the Deep South; although I know little of Georgia politics, I suspect that previously elected openly-gay candidates have been Democrats running in Democrat-dominated districts.

Bearcat suggests that the Advocate will "cover any LGBT person who gets elected to office". The Project Q Atlanta piece cited in the article lists several LGBT candidates who won in that round of elections in Georgia, including Johnny Sinclair, who was elected to the city council in Marietta (population 56,000, so seven times the size of Doraville). Searching the Advocate's website for (sinclair marietta) produces zero results. Searching for (marietta) yields 17 hits, none of which is about Sinclair's election. This suggests that the Advocate won't necessarily run an article on any gay person who wins any office, however minor; so a ten-paragraph article on Bates confers a certain amount of notability. Ammodramus (talk) 01:15, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:01, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This guy is a city council member in a very small polity. There is nothing notable about him other than claims about being the first something, and we do not create articles on minor people just because they have some trivial first claim.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:55, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.